


Open Doors To Madness

by setoboo



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: BAMF Carlos, Carlos-centric, M/M, Mad Scientist!Carlos, Post Episode: 35 Lazy Day, Strexcorp, Tattooed Cecil, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/setoboo/pseuds/setoboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Cecil's latest show, and his commentary on Carlos' diligence during the town's lazy day fugue. Someone at StrexCorp takes an interest in the scientist and his work. </p><p>Too bad for them - Carlos has gone kind of native.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Doors To Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song 'Cheap and Cheerful' by The Kills. 
> 
> I just got this idea during the Lazy Day episode when nothing even phased Carlos. I just really wanted to write him having gone Night Vale native and screwing with StexCorp.
> 
> If any errors are found please feel free to let me know, this is un-beta'd.

“Everyone – and I certainly do mean everyone! - was so very impressed with your tenacity when the city suddenly had its silly unproductive fugue, Mr…ehrm." 

For the first time since the little mousy Stex-Agent found Carlos, ( _who had been doing nothing but grabbing a slice of Big Rico’s from next door_ ) he finally shuts up. Seemingly at a loss for what to refer to the scientist as.

Carlos was honestly in no mood to deal with this man. He was short. In that stumpy way that made him seem like he just never grew right. His hair was a limp brown that parted sensibly down the middle. No ornaments, no snakes, no wildly colored highlights that were actually completely natural. Even the man’s eyes were a pale brown, squinted against the desert sun. Everything about him was normal. Two eyes, two ears, two arms and legs. Suit pressed and starched. Cuffs rolled up just slightly. In one hand was a clipboard and in the other was a ballpoint pen. The Agent practically screamed _'outsider_ ’.

Carlos wanted nothing to do with him, and he vaguely hoped that pen was about to have an existential crisis and start spraying bile or acid all over the man’s suit. If the Secret Police didn’t arrest him for contraband first. 

“I’m Carlos, the Scientist.” he shrugs, taking a vindictive bite out of his cooling gluten-free pizza. Idly wishing he had gotten live mushrooms this time. If only to see the Strex-Agent’s reaction to their dying shrieks.

“Well yes, I mean…That’s…I was hoping for a last name?” The man splutters in response to Carlos’ flippant answer.

Carlos rolls his head down to face the man in the most unnatural way he knows how, and hides his grin when he sees the shorter man’s eyes widen marginally. 

About two weeks ago he had seemingly gained a new vertabrae in his cervical spinal area ( _an occurrence he had yet to figuring out_ ) so Carlos knows his neck looks weird, and almost serpentine, when he moves it just so.

“Don’t have one anymore.” Carlos says after swallowing. He doesn’t bother to explain about how the city had erased most of his ‘ _outside_ ' files and the closest thing he has to a surname is his radio moniker. Besides, almost everyone in town refers to him as Mr. Scientist, or Cecil's Scientist. So Carlos has gotten along just fine without a last name in the last year and some odd months. He certainly isn't going to dredge one up just for a man he doesn't want to talk too. 

He goes in for another bite of his pizza and feels a crunch under his teeth that is wholly unappreciated and jerks back. Nose wrinkling in distaste. “Damn it.” he curses, glaring at the food in betrayal. 

Carlos doesn’t even glance at the Strex-Agent as he plucks a half eaten scorpion off his pizza by the still twitching tail.

“Oh my gosh!” The man squeaks, sounding a lot like the mouse he resembles. “Is that a _scorpion_?”

“Yeah.” He grimaces, checking the rest of the slice for anything other then still bleeding mushrooms. “Scorpion is Cecil’s favorite, so sometimes Big Rico will throw one or two in my slice. Just in case I’m going to share.” His search reveals one more hidden under the cheese, and he tosses it in the general direction of the restaurant. It skitters away. Either making a run for the Sand Wastes or back inside the pizza shop. He doesn’t want to know. 

“Right.” The Strex-Agent says, sounding slightly strangled. “So erm…Mr. Carlos” Carlos attempts to not flinch at the moniker. “As I was saying. Everyone back at corporate was very impressed with your work dedication. Why, even our esteemed vice-president of marketable science mentioned you!” 

“Lovely, I’m thrilled your boss thinks cleaning gutters is impressive.” Carlos knows he’s kind of being a douche bag. But he really wants this conversation to be over ten minutes ago, and since it’s Tuesday and temporal anomalies are usually only prevalent on the weekends. He isn’t going to be getting that. 

The man prattles on, as if Carlos hadn’t said a word. 

“So I’ve been sent too, sort of, scope you out. See if you’ll be good for the team. Which I’m sure you will be. What with how much you’ve been studying Night Vale and all.” The man’s smile is so plastic and fake Carlos is fairly certain if he put it close to a Bunsen burner it would melt right off. Leaving nothing but burnt goo on the floor. 

It’s only half way through chewing his third, scorpion-free, bite of pizza Carlos realizes what the man is implying. 

Strex either wants him. Or his Night Vale research. Probably both if they can get it.

He feels something itch under his skin. Reacting to the hint of anger running through his veins. Writhing, and reaching out to remove the threat. A black swirl comes peeking out of his lab-sleeve. Stretching out as far as it can to try and grab the Strex-Agent.

‘ _Oh right,_ ' he thinks, ' _Cecil left his’ tattoos again_.’

The new station managers think tattoos are unprofessional, and have nearly sent the radio-host home twice during broadcasts because his ink refuses to remain under his clothes when he gets excited. So Carlos usually ends up wearing them until Cecil gets back home from work. They don’t get in the way much, and tend to stay on his chest and thighs. This actually marks the first time they have come this far down his arms.

He flexes his pizza-free hand and watches the tentacles swirl and move along with him. Not completely sentient, but far from mindless. If given half a chance they’ll peel off his skin and into eye-bending 3D then promptly strangle the Strex-Agent. He has no doubt about it.

Carlos doesn’t let them. Only because it could affect Cecil’s job. Not because he doesn’t think it’s a good idea.

“-So if we could just move this to your lab, Mr. Carlos. Then we can get on with the interview!”

Carlos twitches at the incorrect name, then narrows his eyes at the mousy little agent. His lab huh? Strex wants to know what research he gets up to here in Night Vale? He doesn’t even bother to hide the grin that breaks across his face.

The gaggle of teenagers across the street all turn an assortment of flustered colors upon catching sight of his smile. One of the boys swoons and faints. He can practically hear them all fawning as they giggle behind their hands and various other limbs. That’s the Night Vale reaction to his smile.

The Strex-Agent pales dramatically and nearly vibrates with nerves. That’s the reaction he was going for.

‘ _Good’_ Carlos thinks, pleased that his smile still works on outsiders as it used too.

While everything Cecil serenades about Carlos’ smile is technically true. He does take very good care of his teeth, and his jaw is fairly square. Before coming to Night Vale no one ever thought his smile was something to take delight in.

In fact, he had lost a number of interns and grants due to his ‘ _mad-scientist_ ' smile making everyone nervous.

Carlos looks at his half finished pizza and shrugs. Tossing it high in the air, and watches as the twin headed vulture that nests above his lab swoops down with lightening speed to catch it.

He’ll get another slice with Cecil later. One that doesn’t faintly taste like scorpion.

“This way.” He says, using his long legs to out pace the Strex-Agent’s anxious trot. He uses the short moment he has out from under the suited man’s gaze to coax Cecil’s eye tattoos out from hiding. They’re shyer then the tentacles for sure. 

But Carlos is going to freak this outsider right out of town.

Oh, he knows why he was picked to be approached. He’s not from here. He’s a scientist, he’ll be happy to have his work be acknowledged. He’s dating someone already under their thumb. Carlos can’t possibly fight back. 

The reasons are good ones. Shrewd and well planned. If only there wasn’t one big gaping hole in the idea. 

Carlos went Night Vale native months ago, this little interloper doesn’t know what he’s about too walk into. 

Cecil’s tattoo eyes come out from where they have been hiding, on his neck behind his hair. A pair of them happily settle in the hollow of his throat. Which he can feel blinking and buzzing every time he swallows. A third eye hesitantly crawls up his face, before deciding that his forehead is a good spot to display itself.

Carlos can’t see it, but he has a feeling the tattoo above his eyes is probably the same one that usually adorns Cecil’s head. Hopefully - because Carlos has no innate telepathy or second-sight - it will simply remain a tattoo and not an active eye.

The Strex-Agent has plastered a new, yet equally fake, smile on his face. He’s bouncing in his sensible loafers. Whether because of nerves or excitement is debatable. He has his ballpoint pen uncapped, and the clipboard has a number of practical forms waiting to be filled out.

The doorknob growls unhappily. Which is strange since it usually gives very excited barks when it sees him. So he leans down and gives a few scratches under the brass until the unhappy noise turns into blissful dog like whines and the lock turns.

Carlos swings around. Craning his neck at the interesting and unnatural angle he’s capable of and grins his most ( _un_ )becomingly. He can feel all three inked eyes staring at the Desert Bluff’s resident. They share the same vibrating annoyance and homicidal intent the tentacles have. Unlike the tentacles, Carlos doesn’t think they can manifest as anything that can damage the man though.

“Come in, I’m sure you have a lot to talk about.” He invites, slowly stepping past the threshold then quickly veering to the left. 

The Strex-Agent follows follows eagerly, but he doesn’t turn when he gets inside.

Carlos didn’t think he would. His grin grows to include a few more teeth, and he flicks on the overhead lights.

The man’s scream is music to his ears.

Right in front of his door, where the tiny man is standing, is a giant web made of a viscous lilac thread. It spans almost the entirety of the doorway, and each thread glistens with something that looks fairly poisonous. The web has a spiral pattern common in spider-webs, but it’s perfectly symmetrical and has no edges. Then there, at the center of the flawless spiral - is a brown and red spider.

A giant, 3-foot long and 2-foot tall, hairy, brown and red spider. The red splash on it’s abdomen looks eerily similar to a grinning skull and it’s fangs are visibly dripping the same purple poison coating the web. All 8 eyes are a shade of coal usually only seen in the nights where the void has swallowed both moon and stares. A dark, haunting, dead color.

The spider is huge, it’s terrifying, and it’s staring directly a the Strex-Agent.

The man doesn’t get a chance to scream again before the spider jumps. It throws it’s whole weight and easily sends the short man to the ground. Knocking the air out of him and clambering to hold him still with every leg. Fangs poised at his throat.

“ _Hola, mi cena_.” It chitters, in perfectly accented Spanish. “ _Voy a comer su cara fea_.”

“No Marta, no te puedes” Carlos tries not to laugh. Both at the agent’s terrified face and at the Spider’s comment about eating said face.

The spider doesn’t let the man go, but it visibly turns its attention towards the scientist. _"Carlos, ¿por qué?"_ It huffs. Tapping one hairy brown leg on the distressed brunette man’s face. The man flinches like he’s been shot.

“Porque él no es de aquí. Si muere, todos vamos a meter en problemas.” He explains slowly. Enjoying watching the man squirm.

Marta - the spider - grumbles in a high pitched chatter and lets the man go. Stomping as much as a spider can over to Carlos, and climbing the scientist like he was a very convenient tree. Carlos threads his arms together under the spider’s abdomen and helps keep it from falling to the ground. All eight eyes glare at him and one long leg waves pointedly at the intruder.

 _"Si él no es la comida, entonces él debe desaparecer."_ The demand is a hiss of pure hungry annoyance.

“Sí, sí, pronto lo juro.” He promises, turning too the man still frozen in terror on the white tiled floor.

“Sorry about that.” He apologizes, still grinning and holding Marta like a particularly deadly infant. “You know how Brazilian Wandering Death Spiders are.” He laughs, because it is painfully obvious the man has no idea what a Brazilian Wandering Death Spider is. “Next time she jumps you just tell her too stop in Spanish. I promise she’ll listen, she’s pretty civilized for a man-eater.”

“Death Spider? Spanish? Man-Eater!?” The man scrambles back, further away from Carlos and the giant spider still staring at him and waving it’s hairy legs in his direction.

“Yeah, but she’s a pretty cute man eater though. Aren’t you chiquita?”

Marta puffs up, and flails a little more. Either being bashful about the nick-name, or threatening to behead him without words for it.

Carlos chooses to believe she enjoys it and wanders closer to the fallen agent. Cecil’s tattoo’s are glaring from where they rest, and he hasn’t stopped grinning since the man screamed. He must look quite a site. He wishes he didn’t have all the mirrors covered for a moment. Interested to see the picture he paints for the pale and shaking man on the floor.

“Need help up?” He offers benignly. “If you crawl much farther back you’ll upset the snake tank." 

The man stops moving, stops breathing even, and cranes his head back shakily.

Right above his head is a glass tank. Inside is a pair of large vipers. Both eying the man below them like he was nothing but a mote of filth in their gaze.

The bronze snake on the left says something in a gravely tone that sounds a lot like rocks in a tumble dryer. The green snake on the right makes a hissy laugh and answers in an equally deep rumble. Then both vipers make a striking motion towards the bottom of the enclosure.

The Strex-Agent makes an almost glass-shattering shriek and rolls away.

The vipers practically die laughing. Rolling around in the glass enclosure and giving stuttering commentary in-between hissing laughter.

“What do you think of them?” Carlos asks mildly, stepping up to the tank the Agent has scrambled away from. The snakes wave their tails at the scientist, but they don't stop laughing and chattering in their mountain deep language. “Last week's time-spike opened a portal to ancient Sumer and these little guys came through. Lucky for us, huh?” Carlos turns towards the wide-eyed Strex-Agent.

“How can those things be lucky?” The mousy man squeaks. Eyes darting from the snake tank, to Carlos, then to Marta still staring at him, and back again.

“These are Sumerian Black Bites. The extinct progenitor of all the snake breeds here in Night Vale.” Carlos answers blithely, shifting his hold on Marta's abdomen so he can get an arm free. “With this pair I will be able to reintroduce them into the Sand Wastes. Hopefully, culling back the Giant Worm population with the addition of their old predator.” He plucks the lid from the tank and both snakes stop laughing. Instead the pair turn away from their writhing and start reaching for Carlos' hand as it dips into the tank.

“They're just babies right now.” He continues, enjoying the increasingly distressed sounds coming from the Desert Bluff's resident. “But it won't take long for them to reach their natural 12-to-15 foot span.” the pair twines up his arm, and Marta grumbles in Spanish as she moves her legs out of the way so they have room to climb.

“Oh dear smiling God.” The Agent whimpers. Watching the bronze and green vipers helix up Carlos' arm and come to wrap around his throat. Both snakes are watching the Desert Bluff's resident with glowing amber eyes. Black tongues darting out continually as they taste the air.

“Something wrong?” Carlos asks, barely giving the man a glance as he steps around Marta's poison coated web and into the interior of the lab. “You wanted to see the rest of my work right?”

There is silence for a moment, and when Carlos turns around the Agent is pointing at something on the ceiling. Eyes wide and mouth open in a soundless scream of horror.

The scientist looks up, the eye tattoos shifting with him.

Crawling along the ceiling is a pale form in a tattered and blood splattered lab coat. It's head turns down in an almost Exorcist like fashion so it's staring down at the StrexCorp employee. It has two empty eyes, black as tar and just as entrapping. The creature's mouth is a warped and elongated version of normal human one. With teeth stained and sharped too a deadly point just visible behind ash white lips.

“Michael! I thought you were taking lunch!” Carlos greets his lab-assistant happily. Marta waves at the terrifying creature on the ceiling with one long hairy leg.

Michael flips off the ceiling and lands crouched low, head cocked to the side as it continues to stare at the Strex-Agent panicking on the floor.

The mousy man gives a scream so loud some of the test tubes rattle ominously. Michael opens it's mouth - revealing a gaping maw filled with three rows of teeth - and makes a noise like old dial-up internet and the static hum of distant stars in return. 

That is apparently the breaking point because the Strex-Agent scrambles off the floor ( _barely avoiding getting tangled in Marta's web in his hysteria_ ) and takes off out the door with another shrill scream echoing through the parking lot.

Carlos, Marta, the snakes, and Michael all watch him go.

 _"Eso fue rudo_ _._ " The Brazilian spider complains. Climbing down from Carlos now that the stranger is gone.

“Sorry about him, Michael.” Carlos apologizes wandering back over to the snake tank and letting the Sumerian Black Bites climb back into the sun-lite glass. Which they do hesistantly and with a lot of coaxing on the scientist's part.

Michael coughs, sounding more like loud bursts of static then coughing, before clearing his throat. “No problem Carlos, when I saw you wander in and practically sick Marta on him I knew he was bad news.” the 'monster' responds good naturedly. His voice is smooth and young, at odds with his otherwise terrifying form. He stands up and holds him self hunched and lanky like any other teenager might.

“I did say take off for lunch though, you could have come with me to Big Rico's” Carlos raises a brow at his lab-assistant. Putting the lid on the tank even as the snakes inside complain in their gravely language.

The ash white creature scratches the back of his neck with elongated claws. Void-like eyes squinted and maw twisted into a humored grimace. “Er, I was in the mood for Subway, but when I got over there the door was busy attacking someone. So I decided cup noodles was a safer option. So yeah, sorry Carlos, I ate your noodles again.”

Carlos rolls his eyes and wanders into the back where most of his real experiments are kept. Cultures and samples all still needing to be labeled and inspected for various things. The least of which is radiation. “Then you can do a run to the store for more this week.”

“Oh come on, please no. The Cheerios are in the same isle and they hate me.” Michael whines, a buzz of static underlining his tone.

“The Cheerios hate everyone.” Carlos says, plopping down on his stool and dragging a microscope over to him. “Now come on, these fungi cultures only like to grow when you watch them.”

      -0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

“Dear Carlos, you didn't!” Cecil is trying not to laugh, or let any of the scorpions on his pizza get away. Absent-mindedly the radio host plucks the one that is making a break for it off his plate and bites it in half. Happily chewing the crunchy arthropod as Carlos regales him with the happenings of the day.

“He wanted to see, so I let him in. Not my fault Marta decided to jump him and attempted to eat his face.” Carlos grins, which causes the live mushrooms on his pizza to swoon in response.

Cecil threads his free hand with Carlos', and beams at the scientist. “Thank you.” He says gently. Not mentioning why he's thankful. Or why he's holding on quite so tightly.

Carlos tightens his grip slightly in return, and all of the tattoos he's been holding onto come rushing down his arm and back onto their owner's skin. Taking their rightful place along his epidermis.

“It was no problem Cecil.” He responds just as gentle. “I kind of had fun with it anyways.”

They both laugh quietly, and Carlos takes a bite out of his pizza. Enjoying the mushroom's dying screams as they awaken from their smile induced stupor.

 

**Author's Note:**

> All of Marta and Carlos' very bad and incorrect Spanish translated here. Please feel free to correct any errors.
> 
> Hola, mi cena - Hello, my dinner  
> Voy a comer su cara fea - I will eat your ugly face  
> No Marta, no se puede - No Marta, you can not  
> Carlos, ¿por qué? - Carlos, why?  
> Porque él no es de aquí. Si muere, todos vamos a meter en problemas- He is not from here. If he dies, we'll all get in trouble  
> Si él no es la comida, entonces él debe desaparecer - If it is not the food, then he must go.  
> Sí, sí, pronto lo juro. - Yes, Yes, soon I swear  
> Eso fue rudo - That was rude


End file.
